"but
still the ridiculous myth temps speculators to search for a thing which
never existed".

Terry, Michael. Sand
and Sun. 168.

For something that never existed
it's amazing the volume of written material published on Lasseter's Reef.
Most of it purely speculative as there is no reef to assay and no genuine
map shows it's location. But this persistent myth did have sound
beginnings....for a myth, in
National Archives file 1930/512, usually
referred to as the Gepp Report. This file is surely worth more than it's
weight in Lasseter's gold. It has the letter that started the legend, as
well as correspondence and associated documents where Lasseter commits
himself in writing to a few vague details regarding his reef.

Lasseter consistently claimed the
reef assayed at about three ounces to the ton, perhaps a little over, in a
letter to Calanchini at the Western Australian Mines Department, he
reminded Calanchini that the original assay reports submitted by himself
and Harding should be on the Mines Department files. of course the assay
reports cannot be located and I've often wondered if Calanchini wasted his
time looking, I suspect not. It is worth noting here that Lasseter and Harding apparently had assays carried out far and wide. There are reports
of assays from Burtville, Leonora, Laverton, Kalgoorlie and Hall's Creek as well as Perth
and Sydney. Others have claimed extraordinary values for the reef, seven
to ten ounces to the ton being common, and if Lasseter's Reef is
Earle's
Cave of Gold
then as high as 60 to 80 ounces to the ton, now that would clog the dolly
pot! But Lasseter settled for a comparatively modest three ounces to the ton
and stuck with that aspect of his story.

As written by Lasseter, the
dimensions of his reef are vast, his letter to Texas Green claimed that
assays had been taken over 14 miles of reef, although in a later letter to
Calanchini he was a little more restrained and wrote, "the
reef can be traced for over ten miles".
Lasseter never gave any other dimensions to the reef, Coote supplies that
information in 'Hell's Airport', from the first meeting with Lasseter in
John Bailey's office, "from four
to twelve feet wide, and at places was four feet above the surface. It is
deep in the heart of the mulga". John
Jenkins, the Mining Secretary to the A. W. U. also present at that first
meeting, calculated that ten miles of reef, four to twelve feet wide,
outcropping four feet and say a hundred feet deep, at three ounces to the
ton should produce £200,000,000 worth of gold!! Lasseter had spun a good
yarn, "The spell of gold was on
us".

But Lasseter never disclosed in
writing the exact location of these hundreds of millions in gold, to him
for the obvious reason that others would diddle him out of his gold. In
response to Fred Blakeley's direct questions on the location of the reef,
Lasseter replied, "if I told you
that, you'd know as much as I do, and you wouldn't want me",
a fair reflection on Lasseter's attitude towards his fellows. In his
letters to Green and Calanchini Lasseter gave the broadest location of
the reef, somewhere in Central Australia and nothing more specific, until
Calanchini asked some pointed questions in a letter to Lasseter dated the
30th October 1929. (The letter that was, "just
to hand, having lain in a disused mail box for 3 months")
The opening lines to Lasseter's reply, dated the 14th of Feb. 1930, are
revealing, "The reef to which I
refer has never been surveyed & therefore I am unable to give you it's
exact locality, but to the best of my knowledge & belief the Warburton
Ranges is the nearest to it's location".

Lasseter should have remembered what
he told
Gepp and Ward at their interview on the 14th of November
1929, on
that occasion placing the reef, "250
miles west south west from Alice Springs, and near the western end of the
Macdonnell Ranges", areas that are at least
200 miles east of the Warburton Ranges. Perhaps it never occurred to
Lasseter that fellows like Ward, Gepp, Calanchini and Gibson are in
frequent contact with each other on a professional basis, and they had soon
noticed the variance and vagueness in Lasseter's story. Within the month
they had dismissed Lasseter's yarn as nonsense, but Gepp, and the Government
he reported too, saw other possibilities in Lasseter's tall story.

That Lasseter had no reef to give a
location has been wilfully manipulated and blissfully ignored since, and
it's created a nice pile of literature on where that reef might be, with a
few hopefuls, who have never been to the area, writing seemingly
convincing books and articles on the reefs precise location. The best that
can be gleaned from Lasseter's hand is that the reef is 10 to 14 miles
long and assays at about three ounces to the ton and is located somewhere
between the Warburton Ranges and an area 250 miles S. S. W. of Alice
Springs. Hence the expanse of Lasseter Country.

A possible headline for October
1931, that would have been true enough if printed, but
Lasseter's Reef was 'rediscovered' on
11th October 1931 by Frank Green, the
prospector on the Second C.A.G.E. Expedition, fortunately for history
and investors H. W. B. Talbot, the geologist on the expedition, took
photographs and kept detailed notes on this potentially fraudulent
discovery. The following year the Baileys, perpetrators of the Lasseter
Reef fraud, claimed that specimens from this reef assayed at 16 grains
(~1 gram) of gold to the ton, thus proving the country to be auriferous and
therefore worthy of a Third Expedition.

The Second C.A.G.E. Expedition
arrived at Piltardi rockholes late afternoon 7th October 1931 where a
substantial camp was established while Bob Buck and Johnson Breaden
forayed further west for waterholes and Aboriginals. Talbot and his
colleague, Torrington Blatchford, the West Australian Government
geologist, thoroughly checked the land in the approved manner, that is, on foot,
and discovered numerous quartz reefs,
"but not of the type likely to carry gold or other minerals". Buck and Johnson returned three days later,
reporting some success and vague plans to move the Expedition
west early the following week, meanwhile Talbot and Blatchford continued
their investigations.

on Sunday the 11th
they trekked to Mount Phillips, "the
walking was terribly rough" and returned early that afternoon to
be informed by Buck that he and Green had found a reef that Lasseter had
pegged, "Green
was most impressed with the reef",
and he intended to sample it the following day. Talbot, a remarkably
quick witted man, and already deeply suspicious of the motives behind
the Expedition kept his thoughts to himself, "beyond
saying that we have been here four days and only heard of the reef last
night", during a camp fire
yarn, and the reefs fortuitous discovery the following morning was indeed
suspicious, considering that Frank Green the discoverer had done nothing
except the cooking since the Expeditions arrival at Piltardi.

Monday morning, "After
breakfast Blatchford and I went to the leases pegged by Lassetter and
went over the ground carefully",
Talbot noted that four leases had been pegged and the datum posts had
been marked M R, that is Mick Roach, who coincidentally, had arrived at
the Expeditions camp the previous Friday. Talbot concluded that even if
gold were proven on assay the ground was worthless because of the small
size of the reefs. Tuesday found the geologists prospecting to the south
west and returning via Lasseter's leases where they expected to find
Green at work sampling the reef, he was idle having left his tools back
at camp, Talbot noted that since its discovery four days earlier Green
had done less than six hours work on Lasseter's impressive reef.
The following afternoon, "Green
dollied some of the stone he had collected from Lassetters leases, but
he did not raise a colour of gold".

The Expedition
finally moved west on Thursday the 15th,when
passing through Lasseter's leases Talbot noted that, "At
220 chains on a bearing of 300° from Pilltardi we passed Lassetters pot
hole". Aboriginals
met on the journey indicated a few more locations where Lasseter had
fiddled about with pegs and potholes, all quite worthless. The above
photo and one other taken by Talbot of the same reef, are the only known
photographs of Lasseter's Reef and Talbots detailed notes give the exact
location. Although Lasseter's Reef has been rediscovered several times
since October 1931, and in various places, these later finds have never
been photographed and the discoverer has never been able to relocate the
reef.